Google Blogoscoped

Monday, September 17, 2007

Google Censored in Iran?

Some reports state that Google is blocked by many Iranian ISPs. Can anyone from Iran confirm this?

[Thanks Haochi with hat tip to Boing Boing. Photos by Civiblog.org/ MyParapet.]

Update: Reto Meier in the comments points to a news report by Agence France Press confirming this:

Iran has blocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service as part of a clampdown on material deemed to be offensive, the Mehr news agency reported on Monday. (...)

Iran is in the midst of one of its toughest moral crackdowns in years, which has already seen thousands of women warned for failing to obey Islamic dress rules.

The secretary of Iran’s National Council of Information, Hamid Shahriari, is quoted to have said, “I can confirm these sites have been filtered,” but didn’t provide any explanation as to why that was the case.

Update 2: Censorware-watcher Seth Finkelstein points out this News.com.au report:

[Iran] has unblocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service after briefly filtering them owing to an “error”, the Fars news agency reported.

“Due to an error, the Google site was filtered on Sunday evening but the error was corrected and now Google and its different sites like Gmail can be used,” said an official from the state-run communications company.

(An “error"? Like what, someone editing the blacklist wanted to type “doogle.com” and hit the wrong key?)

Unofficial Google MP3 Player

The GSeeker blog posts photos of a Google-branded MP3 player spotted in a shop in China. While using the Google logo, everyone seems to conclude this is just a rip-off on Google’s popularity instead of an actual official Google product. In July this year, a whole “Google” shop had been spotted elsewhere.

[Photos by Nings. Thanks Xiaowan!]

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